Pass ~RXo5T94 5" 
Book 

Cop^ght}; . 

CCEiRKJHT DEPCSfE 



Cburcb principles for Xas people 



THE PEOPLE'S BOOK 
OF WORSHIP 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NBW YORK • BOSTON - CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 



THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
TORONTO 



THE PEOPLE'S 
BOOK OF WORSHIP 

A STUDY OF THE BOOK 
OF COMMON PRAYER 



BY 

JOHN WALLACE SUTER 

AND 

CHARLES MORRIS ADDISON 



» 3 > ■» 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1919 



All rights reserved 



6 



Copyright, 1919 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published, April, 1919 



MAY 28 ! 9 i 9 
©CLA525699 



TO 

H. J. S. 

AND 

A. T. A. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Meaning of Worship ... i 

II The Book Itself n 

III The Fundamental Principles . . 23 

IV The Three Working Principles . 34 

V Morning Prayer and Evening 

Prayer 44 

VI The Litany 56 

VII The Holy Communion .... 62 

VIII The Spirit of the Book and its Use 70 



THE PEOPLE'S BOOK 
OF WORSHIP 



THE PEOPLE'S BOOK 
OF WORSHIP 



i 

THE MEANING OF WORSHIP 
I 

THE Book of Common Prayer is one of many 
forms by which the religious life expresses it- 
self in worship. Before we can study the Book in- 
telligently, we must first consider its purpose. 
That, very evidently, is to provide an authoritative 
form for the expression, in public and corporately, of 
the human desire to worship God, as it is found 
among members of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
in the United States of America. The meaning and 
value of its contents can only be judged when we 
have settled what we are to understand by worship, 
and that in turn must be governed by what we 
know of the character of God, who is the object 
of our worship. To have a false idea of God's na- 
ture must give a false tone to our worship. " He 
that cometh to God must believe that he is, and 
that he is a rewarder of them that seek after him. ,, 
(Heb. ii : 6). The angry God must be propitiated 

i 



2 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



with the blood of men and beasts, the sensuous God 
with the odor of incense, the God who is far off 
will be worshiped differently from the God who 
is within; if God is only the great theological 
Purist, we need only approach him through the 
Westminster Catechism, which is a different ap- 
proach from that of the prodigal to his loving 
Father. The God whom we worship in the use 
of our Prayer Book is the one revealed to us by his 
Son, a Person who is Spirit, a Person who can be 
loved by us with all our heart and mind and soul 
and strength, because we too are spirits, and be- 
cause he is our Father and we are his children. It 
is that sense of relationship at the root of our re- 
ligion which constitutes our right to approach this 
God, and which, once felt, draws us to worship in 
this way. 

Given the true God, then, our worship is what 
we do when we are conscious of him, of his worth- 
iness and his presence. Because worship's root 
meaning is worth-ship, the acknowledgment of the 
dignity, the infinite value of God. Worship is the 
attitude and the act of man when he realizes how 
much God is worth. The thought of God com- 
prises everything that we can conceive as most wor- 
thy. What he is, — all powerful, ever-present, in- 
finitely righteous, loving and merciful, — is worth 
more to us than anything else in the world. If 
he were not, or if he were not all this, then life 
would be not worth living, nothing would be worth 
while. But in him all life gains a value and all 
we are and all we have and all we hope to be be- 
comes of worth to us because God is and is what 



THE MEANING OF WORSHIP 3 



he is. The vision of the worship of God in 
heaven, so beautifully set forth in the Apocalypse, 
is only the vision of God and his perfection, the 
adoration of his worthiness. " And when the liv- 
ing creatures shall give glory and honor and 
thanks to him that sitteth on the throne, to him 
that liveth forever and ever, the four and twenty 
elders shall fall down before him that sitteth on 
the throne and shall worship him that liveth for- 
ever and ever and shall cast their crowns before 
the throne, saying, ' Worthy art thou, our Lord 
and our God, to receive the glory and the honor and 
the power: for thou didst create all things, and 
because of thy will they were, and were created.' " 
(Rev. 4: 9-1 1.) 

This acknowledgment of the infinite worth of 
God, this adoration of him for his perfections, this 
dedication of ourselves to his service, is the expres- 
sion of our religious life, and is not to be confined 
to certain times and places. Religion is all inclu- 
sive and so is worship. It takes in all of life. It is 
not an appendage or attachment to life. It is con- 
stant, not recurrent. Laborare est orare. " Serv- 
ices," as we call what we do in church, are only 
a part of our " bounden duty and service," which 
Christians are trying to render all the time. 

" True worship," says Charles Kingsley, " is a 
life, not a ceremony." And before him St. James 
had said, " Pure religion and undefiled before our 
God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and 
widows in their affliction and to keep himself un- 
spotted from the world." (James 1:27.) And 
the word translated " religion " here, means serv- 



4 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



ice, or worship ; the truest expression of our rev- 
erence for God is always and everywhere to do his 
will in ministering to his children. 

This is all true. But in studying the Prayer 
Book, we are justified in confining ourselves to this 
particular aspect of the religious life, which has 
come to be commonly known as Worship — what 
we do when we are definitely conscious of God's 
presence and worth and have, or ought to have, 
nothing else to do. 

II 

We are also justified in still further narrowing 
the scope of our study by eliminating the worship 
of the individual. It is possible and very general 
and very valuable to w r orship God, in private. But 
the Prayer Book we are to study is the Book of 
Common Prayer, and implies the corporate char- 
acter of its worship. Religion not only takes in 
the whole of each man's life, but is distinctly social 
and is only true religion when it feels its brother- 
hood as one family of God. Because God is the 
Father of a family, he is never truly known except 
as a Father. So Christ taught. And no father 
can be know T n except in relation to his family, in 
his home and around his family board. We may 
use no selfish, personal pronouns in addressing him. 
We must say " Our Father," remembering his other 
children. 

So we believe that the highest form of worship 
must be social, the most effective prayer must be 
Common Prayer. The sense of God's presence 
may be very vivid to the man who has shut the 



THE MEANING OF WORSHIP 



door and is alone with God, but there is a promise 
of a more special presence to the group of even 
two or three, and then the communion with God 
comes, as we know, not only directly, as in the 
closet, but communicated with a thrill from soul 
to soul, in the worshiping assembly. The mere 
fact of aggregation enhances the ability of each 
individual in the crowd to realize a great fact or 
spiritual truth. In all great crises men naturally 
flock together. So in worship, as in sorrow or in 
joy, men learn by gathering together and feel more 
deeply than any could alone. 

" Psychologists have noted," says Streeter, " this 
power of mutual stimulus as the explanation of the 
fact that bodies of men acting together under a 
single impulse are capable, whether for good or 
evil, of a sensitiveness to impression, of a depth 
of emotion, or of a strength of purpose far beyond 
the individual capacity of their constituent mem- 
bers. Is it strange, then, that experience should 
show that a group of men or women are capable 
of realizing and appropriating the inspiration of 
the Divine Presence, or of submitting themselves 
to the guidance of the Divine Will, to an extent 
far exceeding anything which would have been 
possible to them alone? The Divine Presence is 
always there; the gathering together of the faith- 
ful is not a magic spell which attracts to a par- 
ticular spot what was previously absent, but it may 
and does enable them individually to realize and 
appropriate that which was always there, and en- 
ables them to see clearly what before was hidden 
by a veil." 



6 THE PEOPLED BOOK OF WORSHIP 



To sum up, therefore, we shall say that public, 
corporate worship, which our Prayer Book attempts 
to express and give, while mysterious, as must be all 
intercourse with the Infinite, is simply the attitude 
and act of man, sensible of God's presence and 
feeling God's worth. Now this feeling and its 
expression may take many forms. Whatever is 
natural for a child of God to think and do in the 
felt presence of his Father is a form of worship. 
It may be confession of sin, as he sees himself and 
his past life in the presence of God's holiness; it 
may be the yearning to know of God's nature and 
will, as revealed and heard in his Word, whether 
God is forgiving or not, loving or not; it may be 
fervent petition for some benefit sought or it may 
be a burst of praise, in the face of his glory. These 
are all aspects, or parts, of worship. It is to the 
consideration of the question whether, and if so, 
how, our Prayer Book gives fitting expression to 
this worship, as we have defined it, that the follow- 
ing pages are devoted. 



HI 

But before we take up the study of the Book 
itself, a few words are necessary on the need and 
method of expressing this worshipful attitude in 
act. The ideal worship is before us: and the ideal 
is always the real. But the ideal must have its 
visible, concrete expression. What the soul feels 
in the presence of God must come out in some form. 
Just as the ideal man must take flesh, just as the 



THE MEANING OF WORSHIP 7 



ideal Church must take form in the organized and 
visible church, just as the organized church must 
express and perform its functions through a min- 
istry, so the Church's desire to worship God must 
find for itself some outward, and organized and 
authoritative expression. 

We encounter here two conflicting theories which 
must be discussed before we can understand the 
principle on which our Prayer Book is framed as a 
vehicle of expression and a guide to our common 
worship. 

A genius for comprehension is one of the marks 
of our church. This may and sometimes does de- 
generate into mere compromise, but at its best it 
means giving fair play to contradictions, allowing 
each its chance and holding both to be essential to 
the perfect whole. 

In this matter of worship one man feeling in- 
tensely the spiritual in his intercourse with God, 
even in its public form, regards the quiet of silence 
as the only worshipful atmosphere. He regards as 
distracting and intrusive any motions, or sounds, 
and would worship him who is Spirit only in spirit. 
Thus the so-called Quaker thinks and he is being 
joined by many in our own church, who appre- 
ciate and depend more and more upon services of 
silence to feed their souls and render spiritual wor- 
ship to God. 

At the other extreme one sees the service of the 
Holy Orthodox, or Eastern Church, and notes the 
elaboration of posture and act, of music and incense, 
each act full of meaning and the whole of worship 



8 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



strikingly dramatic and appealing to the senses by 
every avenue. Any error in act or word vitiates 
the worship. 

In which of these two w T ays should we worship 
God? In neither, but in both, using each to curb 
the other, and finding only so the full expression of 
all the soul desires when it comes to meet God. 
To take two very loosely defined and much misun- 
derstood terms, let us call the first of these the 
Puritan and the other the Ritualistic position. 
Both are right, but only when joined, both as ex- 
tremes and alone fail to express the whole heart of 
man's worship. For man is body and spirit and as 
the body without the spirit is dead, so the spirit 
without the body is dumb and expressionless. In 
this world, certainly, neither is without the other, 
though one may be higher than the other. Just as 
the government is not the denial of the primary 
fact of the sovereignty of the people, but makes it 
operative, just as the organized church with its 
appointed ministry is no denial of the priesthood 
of all believers, so the outward forms and symbol- 
isms of our worship are no contradiction to the 
truth of the spiritual access to God. As a matter 
of fact, they are absolutely necessary for the appre- 
ciation and expression of the larger truth. 

The danger to the Puritan is that his worship 
after a while dies of inanition, for that which is 
unexpressed dies; while the danger to the Ritualist 
is that he, after a while, dies of a surfeit because the 
body has become to him more than the soul. 

There should be no question of partisanship with 
regard to what is called Ritualism. For that only 



THE MEANING OF WORSHIP 9 



means the science of Rites, of any sort, plain or 
ornate, and even in its ordinary meaning to-day is 
only the use of symbolic emblems and acts to ex- 
press spiritual things. 

According to this definition, we are all ritualists 
because we are human and we cannot express the 
spiritual in us save by the use of symbols. The 
Puritan is a ritualist when he permits the sweet 
tones of the organ to lull him with a response; he 
is a ritualist when he stands to sing a hymn or bows 
his head in prayer. The " Low " churchman who 
wears his surplice in a cruciform church and lifts 
his hand in blessing over his congregation, is a rit- 
ualist, for he is making use of symbols, as he must, 
to express the otherwise inexpressible. 

On the other hand we must remember that any 
act of worship is not only expressed towards God 
as adoration, but has its reflex action towards the 
worshiper as education. And just as we may be 
sure God wishes us to worship him not only in 
spirit but in truth, so we must be very careful that 
what we are doing in church trains us in the truth. 
For that is, or should be, the basis of any objection 
that may be felt to much that is called Ritualism. 
It is not its use of symbols that is objectionable, but 
its use of symbols to express that which our church 
has repudiated and deems false. The symbols and 
symbolic acts must not be used to express a theory 
of transubstantiation ; they must not set forth a 
false sacerdotalism. If Ritualism means these 
things, it is bad, but not as ritualism, simply as un- 
truth and so disloyalty. If what it does in church 
means nothing, then it is petty, unworthy and ir- 



io THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



reverent. If it is used to teach error, it is worse 
than this. But when it expresses the truth of the 
child's loving approach to his Father, then the more 
we have of it the better, art in all its branches to 
beautify our churches, and adorn our services, the 
most expressive and affecting liturgy we can com- 
pose or compile, using all the riches of the past and 
calling in all the contributions of the present. 

Does our Prayer Book, in word and act, fulfill 
all these demands, and if so, how? 

SUGGESTED READING 

Freeman: The Principles of Divine Service. 
Gratacap: Philosophy of Ritual. 



II 



THE BOOK ITSELF 
I 

THE method of treating the Prayer Book pur- 
sued in this book is primarily descriptive. It 
is an attempt, in a simple way, to describe what 
manner of book it is which we hold in our hands. 
It assumes that we do hold it in our hands, and use 
it, as members of the worshiping congregation. 
That other methods of treatment make a strong ap- 
peal is not denied. The historical method, which 
deals with the origins of the book, and reveals its 
sources, has its fascinations. The book is so full 
of history that its use as a manual for teaching 
the history of the Christian Church is conceivable, 
and might well prove helpful. The apologetic 
method, which would seek to commend it to those 
who worship, and yet do not use the Prayer Book, 
is a valuable method in unearthing its hidden treas- 
ures. The practical method, which would employ 
it as a manual for the teaching of worship, or re- 
ligious expression, is a method full of possibilities 
for realizing and strengthening the religious life. 
The normal method would unfold its excellencies 
as a text-book for the teaching of teachers, who are 
called upon to train children in its use, and to help 

ii 



12 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



them to the knowledge of how to worship, is a much 
needed exercise. But the present attempt is purely 
descriptive. In being descriptive, it will, of neces- 
sity, be not altogether forgetful of other possible 
methods and their demands. It cannot avoid the 
appeal to the basis in history, nor can it, if it 
would, avoid the remembrance of those who wor- 
ship according to its forms, or who are engaged in 
teaching the Church's children, or those to whom 
its power and inspiration are unknown; and with 
this remembrance there dwells the hope, at the 
heart of the description, that what is here written 
may bring new light and new power of expression 
to all who worship, to the increase in them of true 
religion. 

II 

What then is the Book of Common Prayer? In 
the first place, it is not a book at all, but a library 
of books, bound together to make one volume. It is 
this very same description, applied to the Bible, 
w T hich has done so much, as a starting point, to re- 
store the Bible to this generation, as a source of 
power and inspiration. Setting out from this de- 
scription, Christians of to-day have come into an 
understanding of the richness which is revealed to 
them through the results of the Higher Criticism, 
and have at the same time been released from the 
blighting effects of regarding the Bible as a fetich, 
possessed of an authority which is infallible, but at 
the same time incomprehensible, and inapplicable to 
the soul's needs. In a similar way, starting from 
the conception of a library, we are led to apprehend 



THE BOOK ITSELF 



the riches of the Book of Common Prayer, and to 
discover its unrealized treasures of helpfulness for* 
the worshiper, while we are at the same time freed 
from the superstition of regarding it as the Church- 
man's sacred fetich, not to be touched or altered, 
and to be honored by empty phrases as to its in- 
comparable excellence, rather than used with intel- 
ligence and freedom, to the soul's health. 

What are the books which make up this library? 
They are five in number, and are arranged in this 
order. 

1. The Book of Daily Offices, or Services; or 
(to use one word of Latin and ancient origin) the 
Breviary. This book contains Morning Prayer, 
Evening Prayer and the Litany, together with cer- 
tain Prayers and Thanksgivings, for occasional in- 
sertion in these above named services. 

2. The Book of the Holy Communion , or Mis- 
sal. This book contains the Divine Liturgy, or 
Order for the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion, 
together with the Collects, Epistles and Gospels for 
the Sundays and Holy Days of the year, which are 
to be inserted in that service. 

3. The Book of Offices for Special Occasions, 
or the Manual, or Minister s Hand Book. This 
book contains the services for Baptism, Confirma- 
tion, Matrimony, Churching of Women, Visitation 
and Communion of the Sick and Burial of the Dead, 
— following the course of an individual Christian's 
life, with offices of the Church's benediction upon 
that life's experiences from birth to death. 

4. The Book of Psalms, or the Psalter, a Bible 
book, extracted and printed here, for convenience, 



i 4 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



since the Psalms are so constantly used in the 
Church's services; and given substantially in the 
ancient translation of the Great Bible of I539> the 
work of that master of the English tongue, Cover- 
dale, " a translation of a poet, and not of a diction- 
ary," and preserved in our Prayer Book, in prefer- 
ence to later, more accurate translations, because of 
its adaptability for musical rendering, and because 
its simple and forcible vocabulary and beautiful 
rhythm endear it to the people. 

5. The Book of Forms for Ordination, or the 
Ordinal. 

Ill 

The first question which occurs to one in regard 
to the contents of the volume as thus given, is why 
it is made to contain so much. It is primarily a 
Book of Common Prayer, that is to say, a handbook 
for the worshiping congregation. For the people's 
use only the first two books are needed, together 
with the Psalter, for the sake of convenience. 
These books supply all that is required by worship- 
ers from day to day. Why bind up with these 
books, the priest's book, containing the Baptismal 
and other offices, and the Bishop's book, containing 
the services of ordination? The answer to this 
question is to be found, in the first instance, by 
reference to the temper of the Reformation-time, 
out of which our English Prayer Book came into 
being. The watchword of the Reformation is im- 
mediacy of relationship. The soul is to approach 
God directly, without the intrusion of mediatorial 
priestliness. The Church belongs to the people. 



THE BOOK ITSELF 15 



The worship is theirs, and is to be in their own 
language. It is not expedient, nor is it edifying 
that the priest should have a book of his own, nor 
the bishop his special book. The rites and cere- 
monies which concern the life of the people, the or- 
dinations of the people's ministers, must be in their 
own hands, open to their knowledge and under- 
standing, free for their constant reading and study, 
designed for their participation. These offices are 
not merely to be heard occasionally, and participated 
in solely by the people's presence, nor liable to the 
clergyman's unguarded discretion. They concern 
intimately the development of the individual wor- 
shiper's life — especially the Manual, which, in 
its offices, touches upon the great moments of 
Christian experience. The principle is a sound one, 
and is likely to preserve the book intact in its pres- 
ent general outline and inclusiveness. 

IV 

Another question which occurs to one who turns 
the pages of the Prayer Book, with the above out- 
line in mind, is as to the omissions in that outline. 
Not all which is to be found between the covers of 
the book is mentioned. This is true. The outline 
of the Five Books as printed above is not exhaustive. 
It is general, covering the essential points. 

Let us consider the omissions. 

a. In Book I, no mention was made of the Pen- 
itential Office. This Office does not properly be- 
long in this place. It is occasional, in the sense 
that it is designed primarily for one day, Ash 



16 THE PEOPLED BOOK OF WORSHIP 



Wednesday. It is comparable to the Office for 
Thanksgiving Day, which is now printed in the 
Manual, with the other occasional offices. In the 
rearrangement of the Prayer Book, which is con- 
templated in connection with the revision of the 
book now in process, the Penitential Office will 
doubtless be removed from Book I to Book III. It 
is true that there is a double use of the word occa- 
sional, in this connection, which is somewhat con- 
fusing. The Penitential Office is an occasional 
congregational service, — while the occasional offices 
proper are not congregational in the same sense, but 
rather personal. There is, however, no separate 
book of Occasional Offices of the Congregation, and 
a place for the Penitential Office at the end of Book 
III is better than its present position in Book I. 

b. In Book III, the following offices were 
omitted in the outline, viz. : The Catechism, Forms 
of Prayer at Sea, Visitation of Prisoners, Thanks- 
giving Day Services, Family Prayer. In regard to 
them, these things are to be noted. 

i. The Catechism. The first and most obvious 
thing to say about the Catechism is that it seems 
out of place in a book of worship. This is true 
whether we consider it as a hand-book for the edu- 
cation of the young, or as a brief compendium of 
theological teaching. But it is also true that it is 
interwoven with the two offices for Special Occa- 
sions between which it stands, viz.: Baptism and 
Confirmation, and is referred to in both these offices. 
For this reason it is likely to remain where it is, 
unless these offices are radically revised. Such re- 
vision is certainly needed in the case of Baptism, 



THE BOOK ITSELF 17 



and is greatly to be desired. It is further to be 
remarked that the Catechism has old and treasured 
associations with many users of the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer, and is not without significance as a 
symbol of the consecration of education in the un- 
folding of the Christian life. These reasons, to- 
gether with certain excellencies of statement in the 
Catechism itself, add to the likelihood of its con- 
tinued inclusion, in some form, within the book. 

2. The Forms of Prayer to be used at sea, — 
and the Form for the Visitation of Prisoners have 
nothing to commend them as offices, and their con- 
tents in general are archaic and not helpful in meet- 
ing the needs of the Church to-day. Both forms, 
with the exception of certain prayers, will doubtless 
be dropped from the book at the next revision. 

3. The Thanksgiving Day Service has no fea- 
tures which require its printing as a separate office. 
Its excellent suggestions and lessons, sentences, can- 
ticles and prayers, as well as collect, epistle and 
gospel, can be distributed to the different places in 
the book where they naturally belong, the office 
itself in this way disappearing, while all of value 
that it contains is preserved. 

4. Forms of Prayer to be used in Families. It 
may be decidedly useful to include within the vol- 
ume of the people's book of worship, a suggested 
form for Family Prayer. It would be, moreover, 
unfortunate to discourage a practice already suffi- 
ciently discouraged, by dropping this material from 
the book. But it has no place in the Manual, or 
book of Special Offices, and is easily lost sight of, 
where it stands. The suggestion is a good one to 



18 THE PEOPLED BOOK OF WORSHIP 



dignify it with a separate title page, to enlarge it 
somewhat by adding certain prayers, and to place it 
outside the Prayer Book proper (so making it amen- 
able to easier revision) — but just inside the back 
cover of the volume. The forms as they now stand 
in the book are, it is true, old-fashioned, and of a 
fashion not belonging to the days of the happiest 
liturgical expression. These forms have, however, 
a certain flavor and suggestiveness of their own, 
and with slight revision, are capable of being used 
helpfully and appealingly. When combined with 
prayers of more immediate reference to to-day's con- 
ditions and needs, they ought to form a little book 
of family prayer of great usefulness, and serve to 
commend a practice to which our people ought to 
return. 

c. In Book V, no mention was made in the Out- 
line of the Form of Consecration of a Church, and 
the Office of Institution of Ministers. This was 
with the intention of emphasizing the important 
contents of this book, the ordination services. The 
inclusion of these two offices in the book makes 
of it a Pontifical, or Bishop's Book, rather than an 
Ordinal, the title chosen. Of course, a Bishop's 
Book proper would also, in order to serve the 
bishop's convenience, include the other service which 
peculiarly belongs to him, the Confirmation Service. 
But it is important and helpful in a people's book 
that this office should stand with the other offices 
in Book III, which so vitally concern the Christian's 
personal religious life. The two offices mentioned 
above are peculiar to the American Prayer Book. 
While open to some criticisms, when compared with 



THE BOOK ITSELF 



the best liturgical standards, they possess dignity, 
and contain some excellent material. This is es- 
pecially true of the Office for the Consecration of a 
Church. Moreover, they represent occasions for 
the bishop's presence which are of very real sig- 
nificance in the life of the congregation. They 
were conceived to be the two occasions of deepest 
concern recurring in a parish's history; and, on the 
whole, this judgment must stand approved. It is 
undoubtedly true, if the American Church ever 
authorizes a Book of Offices (a book which would 
conceivably contain offices for the Laying of a Cor- 
ner Stone, for the Dedication of a Parish House, 
Rectory, or Hospital, for the Benediction of Me- 
morials, etc.), that these two services will be trans- 
ferred to such book, leaving the Ordinal to stand 
by itself. Meantime, they will remain where they 
are now, a part of Book V. 

The Litany and Holy Communion now printed 
in Book V are there because they were needed there 
in connection with ordinations, when this book was 
bound by itself as a separate book. Now that it is 
bound up with the other books, they are not needed, 
since they are provided in a more convenient form 
elsewhere, and these will doubtless be removed from 
the revised Prayer Book. 

v 

There is to be found in the Book of Common 
Prayer, besides the five books which represent its 
real contents, still other material. There stands 
printed, at the beginning, the prefatory matter, and 
at the end, the Articles of Religion. 



2o THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



a. The Prefatory Matter. This matter, besides 
a descriptive title page, and a table of contents, 
which things are common to books in general, in- 
cludes first of all the Ratification of the book by 
the new-born American Church of 1789, together 
with the interesting and illuminating preface of the 
same date. There then follow these items for the 
convenience of users of the book. 

1. Tables of Proper Psalms and Lessons, as 
suggested for certain days and seasons. 

2. Tables of Feasts and Fasts. 

3. General directions as to the services of the 
Church. 

In addition to these convenient directions and 
tables, there is included in this prefatory matter 
certain tables for finding the date of Easter, includ- 
ing tables for finding the Dominical Letter. These 
present a difficult and mysterious study to the aver- 
age man, who is without mathematical or astro- 
nomical leanings, and seem of doubtful value in a 
people's book of worship. It is recorded of Dr. 
Hart, the late custodian of the book, to whom the 
Church is indebted for helpful teaching about the 
Prayer Book, based upon a careful and sympathetic 
study of its history 7 , that he strongly advocated the 
retention of the tables in the volume as a sort of 
symbol of mystery, a pledge of those hidden treasures 
of the volume, which are the reward of the patient 
student and constant user. 

b. The Articles of Religion. There can be, of 
course, no liturgical excuse for the retention of the 
Articles in our Book of Worship. They are an 
interesting exhibit of an attempt at theological defi- 



THE BOOK ITSELF 21 



nition dating from Reformation times. They do 
not express, in many instances, the thoughts of men 
to-day on the great themes with which they deal. 
When they do express these thoughts, they express 
them in an outgrown language. They are not 
" binding," as a prerequisite for membership or of- 
fice in the Church, upon either clergy or people. 
What keeps them in the book is a vague feeling 
that they express a spirit which their excision might 
seem to deny, and which no one wishes to deny, — 
the spirit of freedom, which is the supreme heritage 
of the Reformation, and that attitude towards the 
life of the Christian and of the Christian Church 
which makes our Church a Reformed Church. 

VI 

The stranger to our Church's forms of worship 
sometimes finds the Prayer Book a puzzling book 
through which to find one's way. It seems at times 
to this stranger that the book is specially designed 
to make the finding of one's place practically im- 
possible: It must be confessed that there are cer- 
tain inevitable difficulties, in the use of a book of 
worship, which cannot be overcome. Its very 
genius, expressed in its use of varying, or alternat- 
ing, or of varyingly appropriate forms or selections, 
renders a certain amount of turning back and forth 
inevitable. All that the lover of the book can say 
to the bewildered novice is that it is worth all the 
study and trouble he can give, to learn how to use 
it, and to discover, with pains if need be, its riches. 

At the same time, it is certainly to be desired 



22 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



that in its arrangement it should be as simple and 
convenient as possible. To this end, certain changes 
in its present make-up are recommended. These 
are, in the first place, to move the Collects, Epistles 
and Gospels from their position before the Order 
for the Holy Communion to a place immediately 
following that service. The result will be that the 
four great services of constant congregational use, 
Morning and Evening Prayer, Litany and Holy 
Communion, will stand together in the first part 
of the book. The Prayers and Thanksgivings, it 
is suggested, should come between the two Daily 
Offices and the Litany, into which services they are 
most commonly introduced. This will bring the 
Litany to a position immediately before the Holy 
Communion, a place not without appropriateness, 
since it is frequently used as a preparation for Holy 
Communion. That the Manual, the book of occa- 
sional offices which most closely concern the people, 
should follow, as it does, the tw T o books which com- 
prise the people's congregational offices is appro- 
priate. 

It is true that the Psalter is in a sense primarily 
associated with the Daily Offices, and might for 
that reason stand next to the first book. It is also 
true that Psalms are being increasingly used as In- 
troits to the Holy Communion in Book II, and are 
required in some of the offices of Book III, and it* 
is probable that the present place of the Psalter is 
the most convenient one, while its bulk, if intro- 
duced next the Daily Offices, would break up the 
helpful juxtaposition of the great services of the 
people's worship. 



Ill 



THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 
GROWTH AND COMPREHENSION 

I 

BY the Principle of Growth is not meant the 
fact of growth. The fact of growth is un- 
questioned. Our present Prayer Book has grown, 
through a process covering many years, into the book 
it is to-day. This fact really reveals a growing 
principle in the book itself, which makes it a living 
book. The Principle of Growth is based upon the 
fact that our American Prayer Book is the result 
of four processes of revision extending through three 
centuries. It is based upon the fact that the Book 
has gathered up, and contains within itself precious 
treasures out of the experience in worship of past 
ages. And this very fact is in itself an assurance 
of new treasures to come out of new experiences, 
and of formal and deliberate revisions, as in the 
past, so also in the future. The Prayer Book is not 
an historical relic. It is not a monument to the 
manners in worship and pious observance of a de- 
funct religion. It is the continuing hand-book of 
a living religion. Its revisability, its adaptability, 
its readiness to absorb new material and to redis- 

23 



24 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



cover old, its inherent principle of growth, this it 
is which is the pledge of the Prayer Book's vitality. 

The first of the four great revisions is the Prayer 
Book of Elizabeth in 1559, the Revision of the Re- 
formation. The outstanding fact about it is that it 
is a Book of Worship in the English language. 
Henceforth the Prayer Book is to be the people's 
book, in their own tongue, and in their own hands. 
The five books which constitute it had been pre- 
viously five Latin books. They had been the books 
of the priests, or of the technically " religious." 
They are now to belong to all Christ's people, all 
the Church's children. The first service to become 
Englished was the Litany, and rightly, as the most 
markedly of all services the people's service. This 
had been set forth in the reign of Henry the Eighth. 

The other outstanding fact was that it was the 
book of a Reformed Church. It undertook to cor- 
rect Roman abuses in worship and practice. It 
was not only a translation into the simplicity and 
understandableness of the people's spoken language; 
it was also a translation out of the accretions and 
remotenesses of a scholastic and sacerdotal system 
into the simplicity and immediacy of the Christian 
fellowship of primitive tradition, when the Church 
was the people's Church. 

The book of Elizabeth was itself the final out- 
come of the Reformation process. There had been 
two books immediately preceding it in the reign of 
Edward VI. The first book of Edward VI had 
been the book of the more traditional or Catholic 
cast. The second book of Edward VI was the 
book of a more pronouncedly Protestant hue. The 



THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 25 



final book represented the completion of the task of 
revision. It became the book of the English church, 
and continues, in spite of some further revision, 
that Church's book to-day. We have spoken of the 
two outstanding facts of the Reformation Revision; 
but we are not to forget that it was a revision. 
We are not celebrating the creation of a new book. 
It was the old book, or books, with the genius of 
their services, in the main, preserved, and with their 
great utterances in prayer and praise, marvelously 
enshrined in the unequaled English of the period. 
For this we are indebted to the great translators of 
the Bible into English, — and especially are we in- 
debted to the genius of Cranmer. 

The second of the four revisions was the Book of 
1662, the Revision of the Restoration. After the 
years of Cromwell, and the period of Puritan su- 
premacy, upon the occasion of the return of the 
Stuarts and the rehabilitation of Episcopacy, a re- 
vision of the Prayer Book was undertaken and 
carried through. While the changes were very 
numerous, they were all minor changes, and the 
revision represents no fundamental principles, as 
was the case a hundred years before. 

The third great revision is the revision of 1789, 
the date of our first American book. This is the 
Revision of the Revolution. In a new land, in the 
face of new conditions, the temper of the revision 
was radical. The revisers w T ere willing to consider 
everything. It is true that the resultant changes 
were not very numerous or very great, but we are 
not to be misled into imagining that the business 
in hand was principally to substitute the word Presi- 



26 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



dent for the word King. The Communion office 
was vitally altered. One of the Creeds (the Atha- 
nasian) was dropped. There was talk of dropping 
the Nicene Creed. The Apostles' Creed was 
amended. Nothing was sacrosanct. The needs of 
the people were paramount. Language was altered, 
to be more intelligent, or rhythmical, or more con- 
sonant with an American sense of humor. It hap- 
pened that the two leaders in the movement were 
representative of the two elements, whose compre- 
hension had been the supreme task of the Reforma- 
tion book. These were Bishop Seabury, the Catho- 
lic-minded, and Bishop White, the Protestant- 
minded. To the former we are indebted for the 
splendid revision of the Communion Service, and 
to the latter for insistence upon the liberties and 
sanities that the hour demanded, and also for a for- 
tunate ear for phrase and rhythm, comparable to 
Cranmer's great gifts along these lines. 

The fourth revision is that of 1892, the Revision 
of Enrichment , — which we may write en-Richment, 
in order to secure the four R's of the four revisions. 
Here again was a revision of details, as in 1662, 
rather than a revision of radicalism. It was a pe- 
riod of hesitancy and timidity. There was a great 
and widespread fear that doctrine might be under- 
mined, or the precious heritage of the great book 
impaired. The outstanding figure in the work was 
that of Dr. Huntington, who brought to the task 
great enthusiasm and wisdom, and who won, 
through his generous tactfulness, and parliamentary 
prowess, the confidence of the whole church. His 
controlling thought and desire was for the unity 



THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 27 



of the Church, the unity of American Christianity, 
and he believed that the Prayer Book, if revised to 
meet present day needs, would prove a potent influ- 
ence to bring about the sought-for end. He pos- 
sessed, furthermore, that indispensable quality for 
the task of revision, a keen liturgical sense, and a 
sensitive ear and unerring touch, combined with the 
necessary facility and yet reticence in expression. 
It has been said that after the careful labors of 
twelve years, from 1880 to 1892, the result was, 
after all, insignificant. There is truth in this, but 
when we remember the difficulties of the undertak- 
ing at that time, and look to the effect of having 
accomplished revision at all, rather than to specified 
results, the work is to be recognized as highly sig- 
nificant, not only for our own Church, but for the 
whole Anglican communion. Moreover, the de- 
tailed changes have more than justified themselves. 

It will be noticed that the four revisions are al- 
most exactly a hundred years apart, and also that 
they alternate as between radical and detailed re- 
visions. Because of the time periods, probably, it 
came to pass that after 1892, it was freely prophe- 
sied that the business of revision was over for a hun- 
dred years at least. Subsequent events have not 
verified this prophecy. Times and occasions change 
rapidly in these later years, and instead of a cen- 
tury, a generation only marks the beginning of a 
new process of revision. If we count a generation 
as thirty-three years, it is exactly that between the 
inauguration of revision in 1880 and the appoint- 
ment of the present Commission on Revision in 
19 1 3. Moreover, it looks as if the principle of al- 



28 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



ternation were to hold, and as if a radical revision 
were in contemplation. The temper of the Church 
is manifestly to the effect that everything is open 
to consideration, and possible amendment or re- 
vision, and this temper is encouraged and strength- 
ened by the lessons of the Great War. It is not 
meant by this that the faith of the Church is shaken, 
or to be altered. Nor is it meant that the services 
of chief moment, the great services of the congrega- 
tion, are to be changed in their general outline or 
content. It is meant, rather, that the needs of the 
religious life of men are paramount, and that they 
must be met by a flexibility in forms never even 
contemplated before, by new expressions in prayer 
to meet new requirements and aspirations, and by 
radical revision of the special offices, for Baptism, 
Marriage and Burial and the like, where the de- 
mand for change is insistent and universal. 

The record of the great revisions is the record 
of such formal or official changes as illustrate the 
principle of growth. But that principle is realized 
even more clearly in a larger outlook, which remem- 
bers how the book has gathered up into itself the 
religious forms and prayer and praise utterances of 
the ages. All the Christian centuries have left their 
marks upon it. Phrases and prayer utterances go 
back to the Fathers of the first centuries, and litur- 
gical forms like the " Sursum Corda," the " Lift 
up your hearts " of the Communion Service, are de- 
rived from the very earliest times. The terse and 
pregnant clauses of the collects reflect the Latin 
genius of the centuries when the church of Rome 
dominated. The devotional utterances of the Re- 



THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 29 



formation time, with the freshness of its religious 
awakening, find a place. There are reminiscences, 
sometimes ancient, sometimes more modern, which 
rejoice in a method of repetitional phrases, for em- 
phasis or elucidation. There are suggestions of the 
impress of later devotional thought and expression, 
from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and 
even to our own times. 

More than this, there lie imbedded in the book 
the religious influences of the synagogue, as well 
as all the wealth of Jewish devotion, especially in 
the Psalms, or in the derivations or suggestions 
which spring from them. And what is good in ap- 
proaches to worship or methods of expression in 
heathen rites, the Eleusinian mysteries, or other 
forms, has left its impress. Still further, there is 
formal adoption, and sanctification of those atti- 
tudes and gestures of the worshiping soul, which 
antedate all formal religions, and whose remote 
sources we cannot even guess. Such are the bended 
knees of prayer, the erect pose of praise and of 
prayer too, and the hands of blessing upon the head, 
with their downward palms. It is good to remem- 
ber these things. The book testifies, indeed, upon 
its every page, to its inherent principle of growth. 

And this principle, as we look back, teaches us to 
turn about, and to look forward. This, its funda- 
mental principle, is a pledge to us that is to take 
up into itself in times to come, sufficing expression 
of the newer aspirations of religion, the developing 
needs of worship. To-day, religious experience 
finds common expression in the realization of God 
in nature, in the enthusiasms for education and 



3 o THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



philanthropy and social reform, in the expanding 
and soul-stirring activities of missionary zeal and 
world federation. These must find fuller utterance 
in the people's book of worship. We may rest 
assured that they will find such utterance, and that 
other forms of expression in prayer and praise, 
which our present-day imagination cannot compass, 
will find their place within the Book of Common 
Prayer. 

II 

The second fundamental principle of the Prayer 
Book is the Principle of Comprehension. By com- 
prehension is meant neither comprehensibility, nor 
yet comprehensiveness. It connotes something spe- 
cial. It is based, this principle, upon the happen- 
ings out of which the English Prayer Book issued. 
It represents that great experiment in the life and 
worship of the church which specifically character- 
izes the historic church of English-speaking peoples. 
It consists, where there are two differing and di- 
vergent, even to all appearance contradictory views, 
in the refusal to choose the one or the other, or to 
compromise between them, and in the insistence 
upon embracing both, each in its fullness. It is the 
pledge of catholicity. 

The problem which faced the Church of Eng- 
land at the time of the Reformation was the prob- 
lem of maintaining a national church for the people 
of England, and a church which should include all 
the people. It must embrace within itself the Cath- 
olic-minded and the Protestant-minded, — the two 
sides, which were represented in the great struggle. 



THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 31 



There must be room, and ample and satisfying 
room, for those who loved and held by the ancient 
traditions, and forms and usages of the past, and 
for those who keenly resented the errors which had 
crept into the ancient church, and whose minds and 
souls were strongly set against the perversions in 
truth and practice which characterized, they be- 
lieved, a corrupted order. The Church of England 
set itself resolutely to the task with a conscious 
determination, and with a will to be fair and to 
succeed. There were leaders of the people, to 
whose patience and wisdom the success of the great 
experiment was in large measure due. The re- 
sultant Prayer Book of the reign of Elizabeth, which 
had been preceded by the Catholic-minded book of 
Edward VI, the first of that reign, and by the 
Protestant-minded book, the second, is an eloquent 
tribute to the genius of those to whom the task was 
entrusted, and to the purpose and will of the people 
of the land, which sustained them. For that book 
remains substantially, after all, the book of to-day. 
It continues, after four centuries, the book alike 
of Catholic-minded and Protestant-minded wor- 
shipers, — used and loved by all. In practically 
every service, one might almost say on every page, 
it bears its witness to the great experiment, or rather 
to the great success, to the triumphant principle of 
comprehension. 

In the unfolding of the Church Year, those Cath- 
olic-minded people, who would find there days of 
Mary, may find them in the Annunciation and Puri- 
fication, while those same days are to the Protestant- 
minded, days of our Lord, as indeed they are. In 



32 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



the Baptism offices, the Catholic doctrine of regen- 
eration, and the Protestant insistence upon repent- 
ance and faith stand side by side; and the sign of 
the Cross, or its omission, are equally recognized. 
In the Confirmation service are to be found both 
the Catholic-minded emphasis upon the gift of the 
Holy Spirit, and the Protestant conception of the 
renewal of vows. In the Ordination of Priests, 
there are two sentences of ordination provided as 
alternates, one for the Catholic, the other for the 
Protestant. Formerly there stood in the Litany the 
ultra Catholic suffrage: " Saint Mary, Mother of 
God, all holy patriarchs and prophets, Pray for us," 
and the ultra Protestant prayer: — " From the tyr- 
anny of the Bishop of Rome, and all his detestable 
enormities, Good Lord, deliver us." Both have 
now been happily eliminated by mutual and glad 
consent, since they contravened rather than exempli- 
fied the principle. 

The central and all sufficient example of the prin- 
ciple lies at the heart of the book, at the solemn 
moment of the distribution of the elements in the 
Holy Communion. The Catholic-minded book of 
Edward VI had the Catholic-minded sentence of 
distribution : " The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ 
which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul 
unto everlasting life." The Protestant-minded 
book of Edward VI had the Protestant-minded sen- 
tence, " Take and eat this in remembrance that 
Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart, 
by faith, with thanksgiving." The solution was to 
say both (as they stand in both sentences to-day), 
one after the other. There was no decision of 



THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 33 



choice. There was no compromise, by so much as 
an iota. There was perfect application of the 
Principle of Comprehension. We have here its 
complete exposition. And the great double sentence 
stands in the book of worship as the final justifica- 
tion of the principle, and as the enduring monument 
to the genius of the book. 

in 

The two principles, of Growth and Comprehen- 
sion, have obviously an intimate relation. In their 
interplay is the guarantee of the book's endurance, 
and the indication of the possibility for growth 
through successful revision. When it is urged, in 
any consideration of the book's revision, that doc- 
trine must not be touched, it is to be remembered 
that what is meant is, that the sacred and funda- 
mental principle of comprehension must not, by 
so much as a jot or tittle, be impaired. There must 
continue to exist, within the book's scope, for Cath- 
olic-minded and Protestant-minded alike, the fullest 
opportunity for freedom and satisfaction in wor- 
ship. Nothing must be done to cause either to feel 
less at home. The long-maintained union in the 
common worship of the Church must not be jeopard- 
ized. 



IV 



THE THREE WORKING PRINCIPLES 
I 

BESIDES the two fundamental principles which 
underlie the whole structure of the book, there 
are certain Working Principles which are essential 
to its intelligent and helpful using. The first of 
these is the Principle of Interpretation. The neces- 
sity for the application of this principle rests in the 
circumstance that by its very nature, a book of 
worship embodies within it forms and expressions 
which are ancient, and which continue unaltered 
through generations, and indeed centuries. Such 
forms and expressions are the things which first of 
all commend the book to the user, and make of it 
a treasury of devotion. At the same time, their 
very presence demands, if the ancient utterances are 
to be realities for modern experiences, that there 
should be a working principle of interpretation. 
The principle is based upon the fact that our preser- 
vation of ancient forms of expression, which secure 
to us the historic sense, and the grateful feeling of 
oneness with Christ's people of all ages, necessitates 
the filling and re-filling of these forms with the 
thoughts and experiences and convictions of to-day, 
the immediate utterances of the Holy Spirit to the 

34 



THREE WORKING PRINCIPLES 35 



Church. Flexibility of interpretation becomes of 
the essence of creed and liturgy. The principle of 
interpretation is for us the pledge of reality. It is 
not necessary to multiply illustrations, but a mo- 
ment's thought serves to convince us that we are 
constantly called upon to exercise this principle. A 
familiar illustration, often referred to, is the clause 
in the creed, " the resurrection of the body." The 
original concept of the resuscitation of flesh and 
bones has become universally untenable. Behind 
the concept was a faith w T hich endures in the per- 
sistence of the individual. There are new concepts, 
as to the methods of this persistence, and the words 
are reinterpreted to fit these, and that without great 
difficulty or embarrassment. The collects use not 
infrequently legalistic language in regard to God 
and his dealings, which springs out of Latin con- 
cepts. The concepts are no longer ours, but we 
interpret the language to fit our new and as we 
believe better thoughts. We turn expressions which 
belonged to a Calvinistic and outgrown doctrine of 
original sin, to fit our modern notions of heredity. 
In the Marriage Service we keep on saying, " Who 
giveth this woman to be married to this man?" — 
although we strongly repudiate the chattel notion 
regarding woman, out of which the words sprang, — 
because we interpret it as a gracious opportunity 
for recognition of the father's love and protecting 
care. The process is familiar to Christians of every 
name in the use of hymns. We continue to use 
hymns, just because they are old and familiar, or 
beautiful in form or expression, or wedded to an 
appealing and singable tune, which teach a theology 



36 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



or even a morality which we repudiate. We do it, 
because we interpret the words. By use of the 
principle of interpretation we get to the heart of 
the first singer's faith, and cast aside his transient 
beliefs and dogmas. We love especially the 
u heavenly Jerusalem" hymns, though other world- 
liness is not our dominant mood, because we inter- 
pret them into promises and determinations of social 
reform. 

It is not to be denied that interpretation is not 
always easy. Sometimes the process is a strain. 
We endure it, because of the gain that outweighs, 
and which is the sense of fellowship with past ages 
which the persisting words supply, because of the in- 
spiration that comes through realization of our one- 
ness with all saints. When the strain is too great, 
then we cease to sing the hymn, or strive for amend- 
ment and revision of the form of w T ords. But sucfi 
cases are on the whole few, and even where revision 
seems most imperative, we patiently apply our prin- 
ciple, remembering that the process of revision is 
necessarily slow, where the whole Christian con- 
sciousness is concerned. 

II 

A second principle is the Principle of Rubrica- 
tion. This principle is based upon the fact that the 
rubric is not a law, to be obeyed, but a suggestion 
or direction, to be followed when applicable. Fi- 
delity to the principle consists in a reasonable fol- 
lowing of directions where they are appropriate, in 
distinction from a blind obedience to the letter 



THREE WORKING PRINCIPLES 37 



which killeth. If one enters the great gates of a 
park he may discover a rubric, or sign board, which 
says, " Take this path to the lion's den." The form 
of words is mandatory, but the visitor will not obey 
the rubric if the lion's den is a place where he does 
not wish to go. We are not to be misled by the 
mandatory form of rubrics. They are not laws, 
requiring obedience, or in relation to which obedi- 
ence is a virtue. The verb " shall " in a rubric 
does not connote an order, but an opportunity. It 
makes a suggestion. When the word " may " 
stands in its place, there are two suggestions of- 
fered, either one of which is good, the choice to 
be determined by circumstances. Much difficulty 
might be avoided, if this essential nature of the 
rubric were always remembered. It would serve to 
relieve some ministers of a certain false pride in 
" always obeying the rubrics," by making it clear 
that this is far from being a virtue. It is obvious 
that due regard to their intention, and genuine ap- 
prehension of the genius of the Prayer Book, will 
require at times " disobedience." And as for the 
people, it will correct an unjustly critical attitude 
tow r ards a minister w T ho has disregarded a rubric, 
and substitute for it satisfaction in the fact that the 
leader of the worship is intelligent, and knows the 
value and purpose of rubrical directions. One il- 
lustration will suffice. Let us suppose that the 
circumstances of a congregation's life and environ- 
ment make the one service of Good Friday an even- 
ing service. The strict rubrical provision will com- 
pel the reading of the two lessons for Good Friday 
evening. But these are appointed on the assump- 



38 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



tion that the morning lessons, and epistle and gospel, 
have been read and heard. This is not the case in 
this instance, and Good Friday demands, if it de- 
mands anything, that the people hear the story of 
the cross. The minister will read this. He will 
be true to the genius of the Prayer Book. He will 
disregard the rubric, because it is not applicable. 
He will recognize the fact that in this case dis- 
obedience is the truest obedience. 

It was an English bishop who wrote : " I long 
to see a plain recognition of the fact that rubrics 
are not canons, i.e., a rubric records simply how 
things are done (i.e., unless there is valid reason for 
some other course), and that it is the function of 
a canon to prescribe how things shall be done." 
And we are not to think that the definition con- 
tained in his w T ords is merely a pious wish, rather 
than a statement based upon historic and verifiable 
fact. This is just what the rubric historically is, — 
a direction in regard to the conduct of the service. 
It is nevertheless true that the confusion and mis- 
understanding which have arisen have their roots 
in English history. Because of the laws of con- 
formity, the rubrics in England have become acts 
of Parliament, and therefore laws. We in America 
are free from this unfortunate situation, and may 
vindicate in our usage the rubric's original char- 
acter. At the same time, because our church is 
descended from the English, it has come to pass 
that included among the rubrics of our Prayer Book, 
— the true rubrics, — are certain rubrics which are 
not really rubrics at all, but bits of canon law. 
Such, for instance, is the rubric forbidding the use 



THREE WORKING PRINCIPLES 39 



of the Burial Office for suicides, — a relic of medi- 
aeval casuistry. Obviously, the presence of such 
rubrics tends to obscure the rubric's real nature, and 
to militate against the principle of rubrication. It 
is also because of the presence of rubrics of this 
nature that the law of the Church recognizes as 
an offense for which a minister may be tried " the 
violation of the rubrics.'* It is manifest that there 
could be no such thing as trial for the violation of 
a true rubric. The situation presents a dilemma 
which ought to be frankly stated. It might seem 
desirable to remove from the Book of Worship all 
fragments of canon law, leaving only the true ru- 
brics. But, on the other hand, to put such frag- 
ments of canon law in the law book would deprive 
them of the innocuous character they now enjoy, 
and which it may be desirable to preserve. As it 
is, they necessarily partake of the rubric character, 
and may be open to such following as is properly 
given to rubrical directions. To revert to the il- 
lustration of the park, there may exist like incon- 
sistencies there; for adjacent to the rubric con- 
cerning the lion's den is one which reads, " Keep 
off the grass," and which, if representing a city or- 
dinance, may well be a law. 

One thing is certain. The American Church 
has an opportunity to rehabilitate and emphasize the 
true rubric, and users of the Prayer Book must 
build upon the principle of rubrication, which is a 
pledge for us of liberty and flexibility. 



40 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



in 

The third principle is the Principle of Liturgism. 
Liturgism is a coined word, but convenient and un- 
derstandable. It is designed to emphasize the fact 
that users of the Prayer Book to be intelligent must 
remember that its genius is that it supplies an in- 
strument of worship which is in a special sense 
liturgical. There are three sorts of worship. 
There is the " free worship " which characterizes 
the Protestant Communions generally, and which 
emphasizes the " word " to the exclusion of the 
" act." It is that familiar type of congregational 
service, in which the sermon is everything, the 
other parts of the service being of the nature of 
" preliminary exercises." The people are passive. 
They are ensconced in a sitting posture for the pur- 
pose of listening, that being the main object of their 
gathering. Theoretically, the parts of the prelim- 
inary exercises are free, in that they are not ap- 
pointed or ordered. The minister reads from the 
" Word " where his instinct, or momentary choice, 
dictates. He, or the people, " start " a hymn of 
praise. He, or they, pray as the. spirit moves, out 
of the momentary dictates of the heart. 

There is the " ritualistic worship," which char- 
acterizes the Church of Rome, and the Orthodox 
Churches of Russia and the East, and which em- 
phasizes the " act " to the exclusion of the " word." 
The important thing is that the sacrifice shall be 
offered. The miracle of the Mass is to be accom- 
plished. The bell rings to announce that the act 



THREE WORKING PRINCIPLES 41 



is done. It does not matter that the words which 
may be said are in a language not " understanded 
of the people." It does not matter if there is no 
sermon. The people are again passive. Their part 
is to assist by their presence. In Browning's " The 
Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's," the 
Bishop says: 

"And then how I shall lie through centuries 
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, 
And see God made and eaten all day long, 
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste 
Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! " 

This suggests the ideal of the ritualistic service, and 
emphasizes its materialistic perils, when the " act " 
is made supreme, and the " word " subordinated. 

The third sort of service, which is the normal 
service of the Book of Common Prayer, is the " lit- 
urgical service." Its aim is to emphasize equally 
the word and the act, maintaining them in their 
due proportion as complementary one to the other. 
It seeks to avoid the vagaries and individualism of 
the " free service," with its loss of the sense of the 
common Christian consciousness, and its dangers 
of cold intellectualism, and irreverence, and at the 
same time to escape the formalities, and mindless- 
ness, and possible materialism and irreverences of 
the " ritualistic service." In worship, as in other 
ways, the Church of the Prayer Book has a mission 
of reconciliation. It has a " via media " ambition, 
and strives for a sanity and sweet-reasonableness 
in worship, which shall preserve what is good in the 



42 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



ideals of both the Protestant Communions, and the 
ancient churches of Rome and the East, and ex- 
plain them to one another. 

Of course, an epigrammatic definition such as 
has been attempted above has its dangers of half- 
truth. It cannot be strictly maintained that either 
the free or ritualistic service is represented with 
complete fairness. There cannot be, obviously, 
complete subordination of act or word, either in 
the one or in the other. But there is truth, never- 
theless, in the attempted distinction, and the ideal 
and method of the Prayer Book are made sufficiently 
clear. Liturgism is, when all is said, the Prayer 
Book's ambition; and an understanding of this 
principle is a boon to all its users, who would use 
it with intelligence and effectiveness. Within the 
Prayer Book church, it is of course true that there 
will be found, at times and places, services which 
are purely ritualistic, or purely free. But even 
these will be " different," in that they will be 
molded by the essential norm into reticence and 
reasonableness. Meantime, in the general usage 
of the Church, the services are consciously and 
helpfully liturgical. They are liturgical in that the 
people are active, not passive. In all the services 
of the congregation the people have a constant and 
vital part. Something is all the time expected of 
them. The service is in every instance theirs. 
Even in listening to the word, their response is an- 
ticipated and provided for, and at every phase of 
praise or prayer, their attitude of participation or 
response is significant. The New England farmer 
who testified on the occasion of his first experience, 



THREE WORKING PRINCIPLES 43 



that he " never let on, but riz and fell every time," 
paid his unconscious tribute to the excellence of a 
form of worship, which excluded no one, and was 
not performed for lookers-on. 

The careful welding of word and act together 
has its illustration in every service. The Holy 
Communion, in the nature of the case, is the service 
wherein the act has its strongest emphasis, and that 
is the very service where the solemn reading of the 
word, in the Gospel, has special prominence, and 
the only service in which there is special provision 
for the sermon. Moreover, in this service, too, the 
acts of consecration and communion are enshrined 
in a form which is preeminent for its presentation 
of the great truths of the word, in repeated se- 
quences of supreme significance, in Comfortable 
Words, and Sanctus, in Consecration Prayer and 
Gloria in Excelsis. On the other hand, the Daily 
Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, while em- 
phatically offices of the word, and its presentation, 
look for the expressive act in the people's kneeling 
and standing, and formal responses, and especially 
in the Creed climax, where as one body they give 
the sign of allegiance and loyalty. 

By faithful and intelligent adherence to these 
three Working Principles of Interpretation, Rubri- 
cation and Liturgism, the people enter into a deeper 
understanding of the riches of the book, and its 
ever-unfolding opportunities, and come to a truer 
and more vital using of its services in their worship. 



V 



MORNING PRAYER AND EVENING PRAYER 
I 

THE first book in the Library of our Service 
books contains the Order for Morning and 
Evening Prayer. These are more frequently used 
than any other of our services, and so stand in the 
forefront. 

In studying these we must say something of 
their history: because in Chapter I it may have 
seemed as if the philosophy of ritual there expressed 
implied a book especially compiled to set forth 
these ideas. This is not so. The idea of worship 
and its expression set forth already is inherent in 
all human nature and in every religion, and es- 
pecially in Christianity has been full of changes 
and a matter of growth. Our Book of Worship 
was never framed, or composed — it grew. And 
it grew in the persistent effort of the human heart 
to express more and more adequately its desire for 
worship. Our services of Morning and Evening 
Prayer, then, are only a stage in this long process, 
the outcome of centuries of worship, each age try- 
ing out new methods and using the experiments of 
the past. They are the compressed expression of 
the Church's life of worship through eighteen cen- 
turies. 

44 



MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER 45 



What that spirit of worship is we have seen in 
Chapter I, and in Chapter II we have set forth 
the various forms into which it has flowed. We 
come now after discussing some general principles 
to the twofold task of tracing the growth of two 
of these services, and then of seeing how far they 
fulfill the demands of our hearts when we come to 
worship God. 

The Daily Offices have their roots in the Syna- 
gogue worship of the Jews, just as our Holy Com- 
munion reaches back to the ritual of the Temple. 
The early Christians worshiped still in the Syna- 
gogue, and the reading of psalms and lessons and 
the prayers w T as familiar to them. (James 2:2.) 
But the separation must have come early and by 
themselves the Christians continued the simple 
form to which they had been accustomed. The 
Lord's Prayer and the growing creed would be 
said in unison and the reading of portions of the 
scripture, the Old Testament first, and then as the 
years went on, a circular letter from St. Paul, or 
St. Peter, or a fragment of St. Mark's Gospel, as 
it was copied and handed about, would be read 
and prayers would follow, extemporaneous or more 
formal and pre-composed. But it was all simple, 
and the worshipers took some part. It was 
" common " prayer. Then came the days of the 
monks, when the times and the trend of religion 
drove so many men from the active life of the world 
into the deserts and into monasteries, when life 
was cut into two parts, the secular and the sacred, 
and the latter, the so-called " religious/' was made 
into a life of constant worship. There was plenty 



46 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



of time and little to do, life's wants were easily 
supplied, and so the monastic life performed its 
necessary duties for the body in the short intervals 
between the services of the hours. (Ps. 55:18. 
Cf. Ps. 119: 164). The whole day and even the 
night were turned into a round of services. Be- 
tween midnight and daybreak there was the service 
called Nocturns or Matins, w T ith Lauds attached. 
At six came Prime, at nine Tierce, and noon Sext, 
in the afternoon at three, Nones, about six, Ves- 
pers was said, and the round closed at nine o'clock 
by saying the last of the services, called Compline. 
These services were long and repetitious, dry and 
formal. They continued all through the Middle 
Ages, with but little change. 

The Christian life of worship had been expanded 
to its utmost. Only those who had little or noth- 
ing else to do, could join in it. It was no longer 
" common " prayer. The common people could 
have no part in it. The so-called " religious " had 
monopolized common worship and the laity only 
" assisted " by kneeling at the celebration of the 
Mass. If they attended any of the services men- 
tioned above and which were contained in the 
book called the Breviary, they could understand 
nothing that was said, for Latin was the language 
used. The worship of God had become not only 
burdensome but unintelligible. 

At the time of the Reformation there was felt 
the need, not only of purifying these old forms from 
false doctrine, but of simplifying and shortening 
them and of putting them into the tongue under- 
stood by the people. The priesthood of the laity 



MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER 47 



was once more to be made vocal and effective. 
The men of the Church of England to whom we 
owe our Prayer Book undertook this work. And 
characteristically, in obedience to the spirit of their 
church and nation, they clung to all that was good 
in the old and refused to set forth a new order of 
worship. As their church was not a new creation, 
but a return to the principles and polity of the 
Apostolic times, so their Book of Worship was to 
retain all that the worshiping Church had de- 
veloped through centuries of prayer — all that was 
good in it. They had at hand the Breviary, with 
its hours of devotion, and they found that these 
could easily be purified and compressed and simpli- 
fied, and that when this process was completed, they 
had in their hands, the same expression of worship 
which had persisted through the accretions of the 
Middle Ages, the same order of approach to God, 
the result of the experience and experiments of 
centuries. These are taken up into the structure 
and very words of our Morning and Evening 
Prayer and made vital for the worship of millions 
to-day. And it is interesting to note that only 
in our Prayer Book do these appear in living form 
to-day. No other church has done this work. Ex- 
cept as recited in Latin by the Roman priests of 
to-day, a task they are compelled to fulfill and which 
is fulfilled by rapid reading each for himself, in 
the course of the day, no church but ours carries 
out by daily use the spirit and order of the old 
Breviary. The Breviary, as the people's book, is 
dead. The Breviary, as forming Book I of our 
Prayer Book, is alive and still growing. All that 



48 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



Christian men in the past had found necessary to 
express when they came to worship God, is here 
retained, in order and largely in word. Our re- 
formers believed that the Church, through long 
practice, had developed an almost perfect scheme 
of worship, and they were wise enough to retain 
it. Cranmer and his fellow-workers took the seven 
hour devotions and out of the morning hours, 
Nocturns or Matins, Lauds and Prime, framed our 
Morning Prayer, and out of the evening hours, 
Vespers and Compline, made our Evening Prayer, 
so that what used to take the larger part of both 
night and day, now could be said in an hour and 
a half. They have given us the compressed form 
of a life of constant worship extending over eighteen 
centuries. Thus the book we are studying is 
plainly an evolution and not something framed to 
fit a theory of worship. 

" The Prayer Book as it stands is a long gal- 
lery of Ecclesiastical history which, to be under- 
stood and enjoyed thoroughly, absolutely compels a 
knowledge of the greatest events and names of all 
periods of the Christian Church. 

" To Ambrose we owe our Te Deum, Charle- 
magne breaks the silence of our Ordination 
Prayer by the Veni Creator Spiritus. The perse- 
cutions have given us one creed, the Empire an- 
other. The name of the first great patriarch of 
the Byzantine Church closes our daily service. 
The Litany is the bequest of the first great patriarch 
of the Latin Church amidst the terrors of the 
Roman pestilence. Our Collects are the joint pro- 
duction of Fathers, Popes and Reformers. Our 



MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER 49 



Communion Service bears the traces of every fluctu- 
ation of the Reformation, through the two ex- 
tremes of the reign of Edward to the conciliatory 
policy of Elizabeth and the revolutionary zeal of 
the Restoration.' ' Stanley. 

11 

But our purpose is not historical. Most works 
on the Prayer Book are concerned chiefly either 
with its history or with minute explanation of its 
parts, to its very phraseology. To some of these 
the reader is referred in the note at the end of 
this chapter. 

We are concerned with the worshipful atti- 
tude and its expression in word and act in the 
Prayer Book. What is it that, as we have set 
forth already in Chapter I, should be found in the 
expression of the soul's worship? Praise. There 
are other feelings to be expressed, but praise is the 
highest and dominates all. To approach God and 
get any glimpse of his Being and glory is to burst 
forth into praise. This aspect is the most promi- 
nent one in the ancient Hours. They are built on 
the principle of Praise, they center in the saying or 
singing of the Psalms, so that another name for 
the Breviary is " Psalterium." The services for 
Matins and Prime began with the Invocation, " In 
the Name " etc., then came the Lord's Prayer w T ith 
its doxology, and then the Versicle, " O Lord, 
open," and the response, " and our mouth " etc., 
and the Gloria, " Praise ye the Lord " and " The 
Lord's Name be praised," and then the Venite, the 



5o THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



great invitatory to praise, " O come, let us sing 
unto the Lord: let us heartily rejoice, ,, etc. This 
was followed by the Psalter, a selection of only 
twelve Psalms with their antiphons and glorias. 
This is the heart of our own two services, as it 
should be. It is the way that men have always 
approached the Christian's God. But the fram- 
ers of our Book have added more praise. Instead 
of reciting daily or weekly only a dozen, or on 
Sunday eighteen Psalms, they have given us the 
whole Psalter in the course of the month, and so 
in time every aspect of praise is put into our 
mouths. 

The Psalms are thus the dominant element in 
our worship. They dominate all the others, con- 
fession of sin, hearing God's word, profession of 
faith, and prayer, all these are taken up and ap- 
propriated and fused by the overpowering outpour- 
ing of praise. " Thou art worthy, O Lord, to re- 
ceive glory and honor and power. ,, In this spirit 
the framers of our book were not afraid to sound 
at its very beginning the note of penitence. And 
so they took the Confession and Absolution from 
the end of the old services, where it was wont to 
refer to the imperfection of the congregation's wor- 
ship, personal confession, being then private and 
auricular, and so having no place in public worship, 
and put these in the forefront with verses from 
God's word and an Exhortation as to the worship 
which follows. Because in the light of God's 
presence we first see ourselves as we really are, 
and that is penitence. Only on our knees can we 
begin to praise God, and after we have confessed 



MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER 51 



our sin and begged for forgiveness and heard it 
freely given to such as ask for it humbly, can we 
be fit and ready to stand on our feet and praise. 
Only then do we personally feel the goodness and 
mercy of God, — how worthy he is. Then our 
book commands us to stand, invites us to praise 
in the Venite, and puts the words of the glorious 
Psalms in our mouths. 

But the more we know of God, the more we 
shall be moved to praise him. The service of 
Matins had a lesson consisting of three or nine 
short passages, and Lauds and Prime had a short 
chapter and these were each followed by a burst of 
praise, the former by Te Deum, " We praise thee, 
O Lord/' and the latter by the Benedictus, 
" Blessed be the Lord God of Israel. ,, 

And so, bodily, this next stage of worship has 
been incorporated into our Book. And here again 
its compilers have generously given us more than 
the old monks would. Instead of short selections, 
with many repetitions and with bits from the lives 
of the Saints, they have given us, as with the 
Psalter, the whole of God's words in the Holy 
Scriptures. The Lectionary gives us in daily por- 
tions every word of the Old Testament in the 
course of the year, and the New Testament twice 
over, and the more we hear of God, the more we 
desire to praise him. The natural desire of the 
mind, after listening to the revelation which God 
has made of himself, is to gather up this knowledge 
into some form which will express our faith. And 
so we use here the Apostles' Creed, not a com- 
plete statement but a symbol of our Faith, collect- 



52 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



ing in a few short articles the essentials, on which 
our praise rests, and which give us our confidence 
to approach God in prayer, which we are now 
ready to do at the close of our worship. The 
prayers begin with the Collect for the Day, thereby 
connecting the Divine Office, as our two services 
used to be called, with the Divine Liturgy, or 
Office of Holy Communion; the other name for 
which and that which best describes its character, 
is " The Eucharist/' which means " giving of 
thanks." The two are only different expressions 
of our praise. 

Then come the prayers, which are mostly in- 
tercessions. These are collected from the three 
early offices, Matins, contributing the Lord's 
Prayer, which has been used earlier, Lauds, the 
Collect for the Day, and the Collect for Peace 
and Prime giving us the Collect for Grace. Here 
the old service ended. But our compilers once 
more added, perfectly in the spirit of the old forms, 
the prayer for All in Authority, typifying the Na- 
tion, and those for the clergy, typifying the 
Church, and for All Conditions of Men, adding, 
still in the spirit of praise, the General Thanksgiv- 
ing and closing with the beautiful prayer of St. 
Chrysosrom, and the Grace in St. Paul's words to 
the Corinthians. 

The service of Evening Prayer is naturally as- 
similated to the Morning Prayer. It is taken 
from the Hours for Vespers and Compline which 
each began at the Lord's Prayer, and were each 
rich in the recitation of the Psalter. Vespers had 
a lesson from the Old Testament, followed by the 



MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER 53 



Magnificat, while Compline had a lesson from the 
New Testament, followed by Nunc Dimittis. 

Again the compilers having kept the spirit of 
praise, prefix opening invitatory sentences, an ex- 
hortation, or description of the order of the service 
to follow; the general confession and absolution 
and the closing prayers after the Creed are, in the 
main, like those in the morning, only the Prayer 
for Peace is not now for outward peace from 
enemies and adversaries, but that inward peace 
of the heart, which the world cannot give, and 
the next prayer is not for grace and guidance 
through the day, but for protection during the 
helpless hours of the night. 

in 

The two officers are, it will be noticed, exactly 
similar in outline. What we may call the " wor- 
shipful content," or that which makes the service 
an efficient vehicle of worship, is in each case the 
same. The service presents an inevitable process, 
and a satisfying progress, in accordance with what 
is, as it were, a natural history of worship. The 
great steps of the progress are five. Coming into 
the Presence, entering expectant into God the Fa- 
ther's house, the worshiper's first instinct of un- 
worthiness finds expression in the confession of sin, 
led up to by exhortation, and culminating in the 
declaration of absolution, and the Lord's Prayer, 
to which the Absolution serves as a bidding. The 
second inevitable and natural instinct is to give 
thanks to the Father for his manifold gifts, and 



54 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



this finds expression in repeated songs of praise, 
in Venite or Psalms, in first and second canticles. 
A third instinct, or desire, upon entering the Pres- 
ence is to hear the word of the Lord, and the lis- 
tening soul is satisfied by the lections from Old 
and New Testaments which alternate with the 
expressions of praise. The worshipers then come, 
united as they are in and through their corporate 
experiences of confession, praise and listening, to 
the climax of the service, the great gateway of the 
Creed, the symbol of their common faith, the 
pledge of their unswerving loyalty, through which 
they enter the final part of the service, the enjoy- 
ment of communion, the untrammeled outpouring 
of their souls in petition, intercession and thanks- 
giving to the Father of all. 

It is this unfaltering rightness of the order, this 
genius of the service, which furnishes the answer 
to the question which every user of the Prayer 
Book must ask himself — What is it which makes 
this service, which commands my admiration and my 
love, a great service? For that it is great we in- 
stinctively feel, and of this excellence which makes 
the service a great expression of worship w T e are 
even ready to boast. We know that it is not 
merely because the form is ancient, or contains 
much Scripture, or chances to meet our habitual 
moods. We see the ground of its beauty and 
power in the unity and progress of its structure, 
and in its worshipful reasonableness. 

Note. Supplementing what was said in Chap- 
ter II about the five books which are now bound 
into one in our Prayer Book, it is important to 



MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER 55 



note that there is one still left outside. While 
our Hymnal is sometimes closely attached to the 
Prayer Book by its binding, it is a separate book. 
And yet it is one of our books of worship. It is 
the expression of our praise through music, the 
setting of lyrical songs so that the congregation 
may praise God musically in unison. Thus the 
principle of praise is still further carried out and 
we generally begin and end our Morning and 
Evening Services with the singing of a hymn. We 
now have incorporated in the Prayer Book, as one 
of its five books, the Psalter, or Jewish Hymn Book. 
It is conceivable that some day there might be in- 
corporated there the Christian Hymn Book, which 
ought to be that body of hymns which forms the 
invariable element in all hymnals, and is the uni- 
versal hymnody of Christendom. 

SUGGESTED READING 

Barry: Teacher's Prayer Book. (Am. Ed.) 
Proctor and Frere: A New History of the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer. 

Daniel: The Prayer Book; Its History, Language and 
Contents. 

Pullan: The History of the Book of Common Prayer. 
Dearmer: Everyman's History of the Prayer Book. 
Hart: The Book of Common Prayer. 



VI 



THE LITANY 
I 

THE Litany is in a peculiar and impressive 
sense the people's service. In this fact rests 
its claim upon the constant affection of Christian 
congregations. It is through the full recognition 
of this quality in it that we are to understand its 
preeminent place among those great offices of de- 
votion which are the recognized instruments of the 
people's worship. 

That it belongs in a special sense to the people 
is made very clear by a consideration of its his- 
toric uses. It is the service which leaves the re- 
moter sanctuary, and the place of the high altar, 
and comes down to linger in procession in the midst 
of the kneeling congregation. More than that, it 
goes out through the Church's open door, and 
walks the familiar streets of traffic. It passes close 
to the doors of the homes, and the humblest of 
them, where the people dwell, and winds its way 
among the fields where they toil, mingling itself 
with all the intimacies of their daily experience. 

It is said that the Litany form had its origin in 
the time which followed upon the break-up of the 
Roman Empire, and that it was the invention of 

56 



THE LITANY 



57 



Bishop Mamertus, whose soul was burdened by 
the needs and distresses of his day, when moral 
degradations and excesses were emphasized by the 
occurrence of earthquakes, pestilences and 
droughts. There must be a new form, he felt, 
for " drawing down the mercy of God." It was a 
similar need, in the exigencies of the Reformation 
and the convulsions of that age, which urged the 
setting forth of our English Litany. There were 
many varying forms of Litany, which sprang up in 
different times and places, but the general manner 
and outline are the same, and our Litany retains 
a place of preeminence, just because it has grown 
into its present outline through accretions and ad- 
ditions which have sprung spontaneously out of re- 
curring experiences of human needs. It is the 
people's, because it goes out among them and their 
deepest needs, and because through it the people 
reach out of themselves to lay hold upon God's 
mercy and deliverance. 

Furthermore, it is close to the heart of the 
people, because after its opening invocations to the 
Triune God, it is consistently, from beginning to 
end, from the appeals to " the precious blood " of 
the first suffrage, through the appeal to his promise 
to be present with the " two or three," even to the 
end of the world, of St. Chrysostom's prayer, a 
prayer to Christ. It keeps close to the heart of 
the Elder Brother. It gives every one, the un- 
w r orthiest and the most hesitant, a chance to be 
included, because of the assurance that he who 
was tempted like as we are understands. It lays 
fast hold of the Humanity of God. 



58 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



Finally, in its form and method, it expects and 
requires the constant participation of the people 
themselves. It is not done for them, as if a sacrifice 
by a priest. It is not prayed for them, by a minister 
however truly their leader, or by one who repre- 
sents, however welcome, or trusted, or sympathetic 
his representation. It is prayed by themselves. As 
an actual fact, throughout the service, the prayer 
utterance is in the mouths of the people. The 
minister recites the needs, but it is the people who 
pray the prayer. The people's voices are for- 
ever the dominant and all-embracing note. 

II 

But there is something still deeper, which forms 
the basis of the service's power and appeal. We 
ought to expect that a form of service which has 
so long endured in the affection of the people, and 
which has provided them with so potent a vehicle 
for worship, would possess in the very genius of 
the service itself an explanation of its power. It 
challenges us to find an answer to the question as 
to what is the " worshipful content " which ex- 
plains its greatness. " This is a great service/' 
say the people. " We love it." What is it that 
makes it great? Let us try to answer that ques- 
tion, that understanding, we may love it the more, 
and use it the better. 

The answer is that it unites in a wonderful way 
the two primal instincts of prayer. These are 
what we may call " the right of petition," and 
" the rest in God." If prayer be prayer, then may 



THE LITANY 



59 



we bring to God all our needs, as children ask their 
father for what they want, without stinting and 
without hesitation. We do not know if we shall 
get that for which we ask, or if it is best that we 
should have it. We know that we may ask, and 
that it is good for us, and for God (may we not 
say?) that there should be this asking. Therefore 
we bring all our fears in the face of Nature's ter- 
rors, or of man's cruelties; and all our wishes for 
the welfare of those dear to us, in their sicknesses 
and sorrows, their misfortunes and lonelinesses, 
their great experience in child-bearing, and in con- 
flict, and in dangerous adventure. It is this primal 
instinct in prayer which is met by the piled up 
petitions of the suffrages, with their insistence of 
need and their haunting rhythm. 

And the other instinct is supplied by the constant 
refrain of the " Good Lord," singing its way 
through the whole, as it weaves itself in and out 
in the progress of the prayer, and reassures the 
heart in its confidence in God. The instinct of 
" rest in God " has not need for many words. 
Sometimes it requires only silence, and rest in 
the thought of him, and openness of soul. If there 
be a word, as in this people's service, for the as- 
surance of heart to heart, it is only the one word 
that is required, said over and over again to the 
soul's refreshing, of " the goodness of the Lord." 

Sometimes, it is to be feared, the gist of the mat- 
ter is obscured or forgotten, when the mind or 
voice stresses the other part of the response, the 
" deliver us," or the " we beseech thee to hear 
us," which is not to be stressed at all, but is only 



6o THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



the formal prayer-expression. It is this false em- 
phasis which leads some at times to imagine that 
the Litany is a process of wresting from an un- 
willing God the blessings which in reality he waits 
to give. 

Even if it be historically true that the thought 
of inventing a method of wresting mercy from 
God lay at the heart of the Litany's origin, we 
must not forget that the inventors builded better 
than they knew. Nor must we forget that succeed- 
ing ages of Litany users have by their interpreta- 
tion filled the great prayer with its deeper and 
truer meaning. Indeed, in the very prayer forms 
themselves we have a right to find and feel a 
meaning more original than their origin. The 
word " deliver us " means " set us free," and in 
it our hearts speak, not a last resort in our despair 
to God's possible mercy, but a laying hold on that 
liberty which is the heritage of the sons of God. 
In like manner the prayer utterance of the people, 
" we beseech thee to hear us," is not a hesitating 
approach to our Lord's possibly unwilling atten- 
tion, but our glad and confident claim upon him 
whose concern for our needs we know beforehand, 
upon One who heareth prayer, and to whom all 
flesh shall come. 

The purpose here is merely to indicate and make 
clear this underlying idea of the whole service. It 
is this combination of the two primal instincts of 
prayer which constitutes its genius, and which ex- 
plains the fact of its being so great an instrument 
of worship. 



THE LITANY 



61 



in 

With this principle in mind, one may approach 
each part of the service with new appreciation, and 
especially find new beauties in its changing phases, 
which save it from undue monotony, and furnish 
it with fresh and inspiring surprises, or terms of 
thought. The remembrance of its inherent princi- 
ple and source of power will illuminate its opening 
section of seven " deprecations " or prayers for 
" deliverance from," with its two " obsecrations," 
or recollections of the meaning of Christ's whole 
life for us, and will fill with understanding and 
satisfaction the section which follows of seven plus 
ten " intercessions," with the closing " lesser lit- 
any," and culminating Lord's Prayer, of the Lit- 
any's main division. And it will give added value 
to the second section, sometimes called the " war 
section," with its versicles and responses, its an- 
tiphon, and its prayers. 



VII 



THE HOLY COMMUNION 
I 

THAT the service of the Holy Communion is 
the chief of all the services of the congre- 
gation is universally acknowledged by the people of 
the church. Its preeminence is equally recognized 
by those who urge its frequent use, and by those 
who would reserve it for less frequent and there- 
fore more impressive and better prepared-for oc- 
casions. Why is it thus esteemed the great, the 
culminating service and act of worship? 

The attempt to answer this question will lead us 
on our way to an understanding of its supreme ap- 
peal, and to a clear apprehension of its genius as an 
instrument of worship. 

The first answer, and the one which possesses 
perhaps the most immediate and general recogni- 
tion, is that it is the service ordained by Christ 
himself. In seeking expression in worship for our 
sense of loyalty to him, there can be no more ob- 
vious and simple way than the way of obedience to 
his express command. It is certainly true that 
many of his followers, with no very clear notion 
of the Master's intention or purpose, and with no 
thought-out estimate of the inherent value of the 

62 



THE HOLY COMMUNION 63 



sacrament itself, give themselves in humility and 
trust to the simple carrying out of his sacred 
charge, — " Do this in remembrance of me." No 
analysis of Gospel records, with an alleged redis- 
covery of the original Gospel, and of the Master's 
mind the night before his death, can serve to shake 
the universal Christian consciousness that there was 
intent to leave with his followers an obligation to 
a Memorial Service of fellowship. It is well that 
is so. The motive of obedience is a potent one, and 
the service which enshrines this participation in the 
Master's will, through obedience and remembrance, 
must necessarily be supreme. 

11 

There is a further reason in the constant observ- 
ance of the Church from the beginning. To this 
all ancient records, within the New Testament, and 
beyond it, give eloquent testimony. The stary of 
the liturgies of all the churches, in their infinite 
richness and variety, speaks of the persistence of 
the great service, and of the sense of sacred obli- 
gation with which the followers of Christ gather 
for the supper of their Lord. This cloud of wit- 
nesses through all the ages presents in itself an in- 
escapable appeal to the Christians of to-day. The 
sense of the great company, not only of those drawn 
together throughout the world of this present time, 
but gathered from all generations and centuries, 
urges the souls of men to lay hold upon this bond 
of union, and to become partakers in the universal 
fellowship which is the Communion of Saints. It 



64 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



is an urgent and compelling call that the supper 
be furnished with guests, and the disciple knows 
that the faithful of all ages and lands are expecting 
until his place be filled. The invitation echoes 
from countless lips, " This do in remembrance of 
me, — in remembrance of him/' 

III 

But in itself the observance possesses the elements 
of an inevitable greatness. It is instinct with 
genius for the realizing within men's souls of the 
final facts of the spiritual life. Partaking together 
of the common food is the very method of individual 
and corporate life. The material side of it gives 
it power because we are in very deed tabernacled in 
the flesh. It is the testimony of age-long human 
experience that no other act can compare with 
the partaking together of the bread of life, in es- 
tablishing and cementing that communion with the 
life of God and with the life of man, without 
which we cannot live. Had Christ himself not 
instituted the Lord's Supper, then must his fol- 
lowers have perforce forthwith instituted it, since 
their life with him and with one another demands 
it. 

The tw r o names by which the sacrament is most 
commonly and universally designated are the 
Lord's Supper, and the Holy Communion, and 
these names are equally expressive of the genius 
and method of the great service, and testify to its 
preeminence. Each name is of two words. One 
w 7 ord is not sufficient, because what is demanded is 



THE HOLY COMMUNION 65 



a combination of intimacy and mystery, and this 
combination each name supplies. The soul requires 
in its culminating act of worship the opportunity 
of intimacy. It must make and keep connection 
with the most familiar and constant things of life. 
Its feet must be upon the ground. It must also 
possess the immediacy of approach to things divine. 
It demands to lay hold upon the ultimate mystery. 
In its very expression it must have to do with 
things inexpressible and unutterable. The names 
give form to these two equally insistent demands. 
There is nothing more intimate, homely, or fa- 
miliar than a supper. But it is the Lord's supper. 
There is nothing more intimate and familiar, more 
essential to living, than communion or fellowship. 
The ultimate horror for the human soul is soli- 
tude. But it is the Holy Communion. Its very 
title helps us to an understanding of the fact that 
this service is our culminating and supreme act of 
worship. 

IV 

There is a further question for users of the 
Prayer Book. Why is the Communion Service of 
that book so great and satisfying an instrument of 
worship, — so worthy a vehicle for the supreme ob- 
servance ? 

The service itself, as we hold it in our hands 
to-day, is the descendant of a long line of ancient 
liturgies. It has taken up into itself a vast and 
sacred experience in Christian worship. This is 
much in itself. 

When we come to study these ancient liturgies, 



66 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



one thing at least becomes plain, and that is that 
each one is composed of parts. There are, for in- 
stance, two parts which may be universally recog- 
nized. The names of these are familiar to students 
of the subject, the pro-anaphora, and the anaphora, 
or the ordinary of the mass, and the canon of the 
mass. In a word, these two parts represent a 
preparatory service, and the service, or celebration 
of the sacrament itself. Still a third part becomes 
recognizable at certain times or under certain con- 
ditions, and this is the Communion, that is the 
partaking by the people of the offered sacrifice. 
There is a possibility, and in certain cases, a tend- 
ency, to make these parts not only separable, but 
separate. The pro-anaphora, or ordinary of the 
mass, or the ante-Communion, may be severed by 
an interval, or inserted hymn, from the real serv- 
ice which follows. It may be used by itself. It is 
of possible edification to outsiders, who are not as 
yet of the number of the faithful. It may con- 
ceivably be used on the day before, as a service by 
itself of preparation for to-morrow's sacrament. 
In like manner, the Communion of the people, if 
this Communion is infrequent, and if it is esteemed 
unessential, the offering of the sacrifice being the 
one necessary celebration of the feast, may be 
relegated to a subordinate place of occasional oc- 
currence. 

But it is the genius of our Prayer Book service 
to make clear, while the service has parts, that 
these parts are not detachable, but are parts of a 
whole, are parts whose significance consists in em- 
phasizing and realizing the whole. 



THE HOLY COMMUNION 67 



As a matter of fact, the parts of the service, as 
it stands in our book to-day, are three. They may 
be designated as a series of Approaches, in order by 
means of a series, to make it clear that the one 
great service all through is presented as an Ap- 
proach to the Presence. Herein rest the reasonable- 
ness and beauty of its structure. The approaches 
may be symbolized by the plan of Solomon's 
Temple, or of any Christian church. There are 
the Outer Court, and the Inner Court, and the 
Holy of Holies. There are the Nave and the 
Choir and the Sanctuary. But the temple is 
one — the church is one. This structure of the 
service is carried through with amazing symmetry 
and proportion and richness of detail, like an ar- 
chitectural plan. The first approach may be called 
the Instructional Approach. Here are the Scrip- 
tural lessons, from the New Testament, in Epistle 
and Gospel, and from the Old, in the Ten Com- 
mandments; and here through the same enunciation 
of God's law, is the opportunity for self-examina- 
tion. The second approach may be called the In- 
tercessional Approach. Here is the remembrance 
of our brethren in the giving of alms, and in the 
great intercession, which leads as intercession does, 
to confession, followed by the assurance of God's 
forgiveness, fortified by the summary of his gifts of 
grace, as contained in the Comfortable Words. 
The third approach is the Sacramental Approach, 
with the central Prayer of Consecration and its 
Words of Institution, followed by the Communion 
of the people. 

Moreover, each approach is ordered in a cor- 



68 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



responding manner with every other, in the method 
of its inauguration and of its climax. Each be- 
gins, with the priest and people, so to speak, on 
their knees in humility or penitence, and each ends 
with an outburst of triumphant thanksgiving and 
praise. In the first, we begin with the Office's col- 
lect, and its prayer that the thoughts of our hearts 
may be cleansed; and we end with the triumphant 
singing or saying of the Nicene Creed. In the sec- 
ond, we begin with the great prayer of intercession 
which takes up into itself our alms and oblations, 
and we end with the exultant Sanctus. In the 
third, we begin with the prayer of humble access, 
and the sense of our unworthiness so much as to 
gather up the crumbs, and we end, after the cul- 
minating Lord's Prayer and word of Thanksgiving, 
with the praises of the Gloria in Excelsis. And 
then, with the Blessing, the service is over, and it 
is over with a sense of completeness. The unity is 
the striking fact, and gives its compelling force and 
beauty to the supreme act of worship. It is an ap- 
proach through a series, but it is one great ap- 
proach. No part is detachable or inconsequential. 
It is a progressive realization of the fundamental 
facts of God's gift, and of man's participation. It 
is a continuous and self-completing sacrifice. 
Priest and people together enter into solemn prepa- 
ration, together they consecrate the bread and wine, 
and plead the sacrifice, together they partake of 
the Body and Blood. All are interdependent in one 
communion, all parts of the service are indis- 
solubly united, and contribute essentially to the per- 
fection of the whole. 



THE HOLY COMMUNION 69 



The service of our Prayer Book Indubitably de- 
rives its greatness, in a true sense, from the fact 
that its roots are in the great liturgies of the past, 
and from its fidelity to the total experience of wor- 
shiping Christendom. But it may claim with rea- 
son that it is a very perfect flower of a long process 
of growth, and though sometimes the methods of 
its development have been almost by accident, while 
again they have been through deliberate determina- 
tion, the result is a model, not necessarily perfect, 
or the denial of further development to come, — but 
yet a model, to which the churches of the Anglican 
Communion and churches everywhere, may well 
look with imitative envy, and gratitude. 



VIII 



THE SPIRIT OF THE BOOK AND ITS USE 
I 

THE question was asked in the opening chap- 
ter whether, and if so, how, our Book of 
Common Prayer expressed and fulfilled the mani- 
fold needs of the human heart as it came to worship 
God. It is hoped that this question has been 
answered. But not only, as was said in the closing 
words of Chapter V, does it satisfy the needs of 
the individual worshiper, not only does it bring 
the individual into a common worship with other 
individuals, its scope is far wider. It has no sym- 
pathy with the selfish " private worship in public," 
which so many try to make it. It is the Peopled 
Book. The word " Common " in its title has 
the same connotation as in " Commonwealth," it 
is less for the individual than for the community. 

This comes not only from its Catholic compre- 
hensiveness, its determined acceptance of opposite 
views, nor from its touching the needs and aspira- 
tions of every part of a man and of so many differ- 
ent kinds of men, but from its inherent interest in 
and insistence on the social side of man's life. It 
has caught its spirit from the Lord's Prayer, 
" After this manner, therefore pray ye, say Our 

70 



THE SPIRIT OF THE BOOK 71 



Father." The "we" and " us " and "our" are 
not editorial but vital. They mean what they say 
and they call on us to mean it. The congregation 
which uses this Book is not a congeries of units, 
a number of grains of sand in a heap, with no co- 
hesion nor unity. It is a body of worshipers ap- 
proaching God as an organic unity, each cooperating 
with each, and all forming the body of Christ which 
is the Church. 

There is a time and a place for a man to stand 
before God alone. We all must. But when we 
assemble and meet together to use this Book, is not 
the time. It fulfills and expands the form of wor- 
ship Christ gave us in the Lord's Prayer. It com- 
pels us, like that, to clasp hands in spirit with all 
our brothers and thus to approach our Father to- 
gether. Here we are forced to remember that all 
we are brethren, that we are one in our sin and in 
our need of salvation, one in our desire to praise 
God, and that it is good and necessary to pray one 
for another. The Prayer Book's Confession of Sin, 
whether in Daily Office, or Communion Service, is 
not your sin or mine; the terms are too general to 
satisfy the individual conscience, which has to say, 
" thus and thus have I sinned and done this evil in 
thy sight." It is purposely general, because it is 
confession of the corporate sin of a great body of 
people. Our thoughts are to be lifted from what 
we have done that is wrong to the sin of the world, 
the sins of the people kneeling by us, the crimes 
committed in our community; and we are made to 
feel these vicariously as our own, the shame and 
blame of them, the need of repentance for them, 



72 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



and the need of forgiveness. Our common brother- 
hood makes us responsible for the sins of our broth- 
ers, makes us share them, makes us feel their weight. 
In like manner the great words of the Absolution 
declare that God promises forgiveness to his people, 
that he pardoneth all who truly repent, in which 
pardon we pray that we may have a share. And 
after confession and absolution comes the climax 
in the Lord's Prayer whose spirit we have now 
caught and whose words we can now say. This 
is what is meant by the Social Character of our 
Book of Worship. 

It is still further expressed by its common praise, 
too often usurped by a choir. When we rise from 
our knees and stand in joy, all of us should sing 
aloud; "O come let us sing unto the Lord, let us 
heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation 99 ; 
or " Glory be to God on High, and on earth 
peace." It is a perfect example of that modern ex- 
ercise called " a community sing," the spontaneous 
expression of a common joy, into which all must 
enter if it is to be worthily expressed. And in the 
hearing of the message from God, wherever in any 
service the Word is read, the burden in the Old 
Testament rs that of a people, a nation, guided and 
redeemed by God as a whole; and in the New, that 
of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of 
Man. Nor do we forget how largely the prayers 
are intercessory, remembering the needs of others 
before our own. 

Here is the Social Gospel proclaimed in every part 
of our Book. It belongs to the people and has their 
interests at heart. It is not something for good 



THE SPIRIT OF THE BOOK 73 



Episcopalians to enjoy, in beautiful churches and 
with sumptuous adjuncts, but should be heard like 
the Lord, by the common people gladly; as it will 
be when they understand what is their heritage. 

If this is true, instead of being one of the dis- 
tinctive (and separating) marks of our Episcopal 
Church, the Prayer Book should offer one of the 
strongest bonds of unity to Christians of every 
name. 

II 

This spirit of the Book, which makes of it a 
unifier for all Christian worshipers, imposes upon 
its users a serious responsibility. As its users, they 
are in a real sense its possessors, and its possessors in 
order that they may give it freely to the world's 
and the Church's needs. In the long run its wider 
influence rests upon the simple devotion of the 
worshipers who use the book, and upon their in- 
telligent, high-minded, and true-hearted employ- 
ment of its great expressions of worship. 

As one dwells upon the beauty and impressiveness 
of each of its great services, a thought which is sure 
to be brought home is this. The occasion of the 
use of any one of these is a great opportunity, a 
great event. This ought to be the conviction of 
every individual who goes to God's house to wor- 
ship. He is to take his part in a great act of 
worship, which is to be ordered according to a form 
of service, which has been perfected in its expres- 
sion through the thought and experience and inspi- 
ration of ages of worship and of leaders of worship. 
There ought to be an exhilaration and a sobriety 



74 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 



and a joy in his approach. His silent prayer of 
preparation ought to be a heartfelt prayer that he 
may be worthy to be a partaker, and that he may 
make a complete offering, keeping nothing back, 
whether of penitence or praise. 

And here it must be recognized how much de- 
pends upon the leader of the worship. If the serv- 
ice is a great event for the worshiper in the pew, 
how great an event ought it to be for the minister. 
He brings not only the needs and offerings of his 
own soul, but the demands upon him of all the 
waiting people. His is a great responsibility, — to 
be the sufficient medium for utterance, the director 
and inspirer, the interpreter, encourager, ambassa- 
dor in Christ's stead. These things are not said 
with a view of suggesting any external dignity of 
office, or any superior or imposed priesthood. They 
are said simply to call to mind the facts of the 
situation, the inescapable findings of experience. 
So much, so very much depends on the minister. 
It is true that there are the prayers and hymns 
themselves, the forms of the service, the great words 
and sublime thoughts, made doubly sacred by age- 
long and precious associations — these things which 
no man can take away. It is true that in a very 
real sense the book itself in the worshiper's hand 
is a protection from the vagaries of the minister. 
And yet when all is said, so much depends upon 
him. In the light of the great event, there is surely 
no room for lack of preparation on his part. He 
ought to know beforehand what he is going to read 
from God's word and how to read it. Surely he 



THE SPIRIT OF THE BOOK 75 



ought to pray, not read, the prayers, and know and 
feel just what prayers ought to be prayed that day 
and that hour. And the words of praise in hymn 
and canticle that are to be the people's utterances 
ought to be his special care. The unity of impres- 
sion of that given service which it is so possible to 
obtain, through an understanding of the book's 
riches and possibilities in variety and flexibility, — 
this must be his care. In face of the great event, 
there can be no room for thoughtlessness, careless- 
ness, the slipshod or irreverent manner, the unin- 
telligible utterance, the destroying wrong emphasis, 
the annoying and obtrusive mannerism, the unsym- 
pathetic and perfunctory rendering, and the half- 
hearted entrance into the act of worship. And yet 
these things happen, and happen often. Ministers 
and people cannot tell themselves too often that the 
service in which they take part is a great event. 

Unity is the watchword of our day and genera- 
tion. Whether it be unity between classes or races, 
unity industrial or social, the unity between nations 
which is to insure a new and better world, or the 
unity of the Church, which seizes the imagination 
and fires the zeal, it is for unity that the religious 
labor most earnestly, it is the vision of the coming 
Kingdom that most insistently inspires the enthus- 
iasm of Christian worshipers. It is because our 
People's Book of Worship is so great a medium for 
the realizing of unity, so truly a handbook of the 
Kingdom of God and of his Christ, that the lovers 
and users of it must hold it as a sacred trust, and 
so deeply feel their responsibility that their use of 



76 THE PEOPLE'S BOOK OF WORSHIP 

it, and their whole-hearted participation in its 
services, will render it the efficient and compelling 
instrument it may well be in the great cause of 
universal Christian fellowship. 



THE END 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



HE following pages contain advertisements of a 
few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects. 



Report of the Joint Commission 
on the Book of Common Prayer 

Boards, Z2mo 

This is the second Report of the Commission, the first having 
been made to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church 
at St. Louis in 1916. The volume contains the recommendations 
which are to be made to the Convention of this year, which is 
to meet in Detroit next October. The book will be of general in- 
terest, since it contains in addition to the suggested details of 
revision, many new prayers and new services which are proposed 
as substitutes for those now in the Prayer Book or as new ma- 
terial. These services include the Baptismal service, Offices of 
Instruction to take the place of the Church Catechism, a new 
order for the Visitation of the Sick, an Office for the Admission 
of Deaconesses, and forms of Litany, Intercession, and Thanks- 
giving, as well as a Compline, which are to be placed, according to 
the recommendation, in what will practically be an appendix at 
the end of the Prayer Book. While there are numerous sugges- 
tions for detailed revision, in those services which are used by the 
people in their worship, these services are left on the whole in 
their present great outlines. The Occasional Offices, on the con- 
trary, notably the Office for the Burial of the Dead, show radical 
changes and helpful enrichment. 

The present Report goes considerably beyond the Report of 
1916 in the variety and extent of its recommendations. The 
proposals which concern the amendment of the text of the Psalter 
are of special interest. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



DR. EDWARD S. DROWN'S NEW BOOK 



God's Responsibility for the War 

By Edward S. Drown, 
of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, and Author 
of " The Apostles' Creed Today." 

Boards, i2mo, $.60 

Why did God permit the war? If He is good, did He not 
want to prevent it? If He is almighty, could He not have done 
so? Can we continue to believe in God, the Father almighty? 

This little book maintains that there is a false and a true idea 
of omnipotence. The false idea holds that God can do anything 
even if it involve a moral contradiction. The true idea inter- 
prets omnipotence in Christian terms as the omnipotence of the 
divine suffering love which must ultimately prove to be supreme 
power. 

DR. DROWN'S RECENT BOOK 

The Apostles' Creed Today 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.00 

Dr. Drown first gives an historical interpretation of the origin 
and growth of the Apostles' Creed. After this he takes up the 
different articles of the creed relating each to the whole and show- 
ing how each of them embodies a universal and continuing truth. 

The book is intended for the ordinary layman who wants 
things stated frankly, plainly and intelligently. It will be found 
to illuminate many dark places and to answer questions and clear 
up doubts. 



THE MACMTLLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



NEW RELIGIOUS BOOKS 



CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 

By WILLIAM PIERSON MERRILL 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 

Dr. Merrill begins first with a discussion of the function of Christianity 
in the world. He then takes up the Old Testament and the New Testa- 
ment in their relation to internationalism. The titles of succeeding 
chapters are Christianity and Internationalism, Democracy and Inter- 
nationalism, America and Internationalism, Constructive Proposals for 
International Order, Problems Confronting Internationalism, Christian 
Principles Underlying Internationalism, The War and Internationalism 
and The Church and Internationalism. There is also a final chapter in 
which are presented the author's conclusions. 

THE KINGDOM THAT MUST BE BUILT 

By WALTER J. CAREY Cloth, i2mo, $1.00 
A man inspired by War's Example of sacrificial service wholesale, felt 
at close grips as chaplain in the Royal Navy, comes back to civil life 
determined to put an equivalent sacrificial service into his ministry there. 

He calls on others to join him, "Tee Kingdom teat must be Built" 
outlines his program. It calls for and is calculated to call out unused 
reserves in her members which will effect a Christian penetration of the 
world by the church, heretofore unknown. 

"Marked by Freshness of Thouget and Expression — bote Con- 
vincing and Inspiring." — Church Times. 

SIX THOUSAND COUNTRY CHURCHES 

By CHARLES OTIS GILL and GIFFORD PINCHOT 
Published under the authority of the Federal Council of the Churches 
of Christ in America. With many maps and diagrams. 

Cloth, I27Y10 

This is a complete study of church conditions in a part of rural Ohio 
made with an attempt to test the possibilities of interdenominational 
federation. It describes a situation where ignorance and superstition 
have prevailed despite the churches, or perhaps because of the ineffec- 
tiveness of the churches. 

JESUS AND THE YOUNG MAN OF TO-DAY 

By JOHN M. HOLMES 
Gen. Sec'y of the Central Y. M. C. A., of Greenville, S. C. 

Cloth, i2mo 

There is a period in the life of nearly everyone, when the beliefs of 
childhood are questioned and a restatement of faith is demanded which 
shall meet the demands of reason as well as of the heart. It is for those 
who are living within this troubled period that the present volume has 
been prepared especially, though every student of the life of Christ will 
be bennted by it. It seeks to make clear the essentials of a satisfying 
religious belief . 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



CHURCH PRINCIPLES FOR LAY PEOPLE 

With God in the War 

By DR. CHARLES L. SLATTERY, 
Rector of Grace Church, New York 

Cloth, i6mo f $.60 

" This is a compilation by Dr. Slattery and a contribution from 
the War Commission of the Episcopal Church to the men in 
Service. It is meant to lift and ennoble their thought of the war, 
its purpose and way and its ultimate goal." 

" The selections begin with President Wilson's declaration 
and then follow notable utterances in prose and poetry from 
Milton, Lowell, Service, Oxenham, Lord Roberts, Alfred Noyes 
and many others. There is a beautiful prayer by George Wash- 
ington. Each section is enriched by passages from Isaiah, the 
Psalms and the Gospels and by several fitting prayers for the 
soldier boys themselves. To them it should come as a wonderful 
inspiration and incentive, and it would do us all good to read 
and use it."— Churchman. 

Why Men Pray 

By DR. CHARLES L. SLATTERY 
Rector of Grace Church, New York 

Cloth, i2mo. $1.00 
The author is in the front rank of the younger men in the 
Episcopal Ministry ; his book carries an authoritative and appre- 
ciative message to the steadily increasing number of people who 
find prayer of intimate and significant value in their daily lives. 

" A little volume of unusual power and insight. . . . The mean- 
ing of prayer, its value and results in life and character are very 
practically and helpfully explained." — Independent. 

The Episcopal Church: Its Faith and Order 

By GEORGE HODGES, 
Dean of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass. 

Cloth, i2mo, $j.oo 
This present volume is a concise statement of the doctrine and 
discipline of the Episcopal Church. 

" The author writes for humanity, and no better book for re- 
ligious study, for clergy, laity, and for the younger members of 
the churches has appeared in some time." — Reviezv of Reviews. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



